HTC, Nokia: I’m Too Sexy For This SmartphoneNews from InformationWeek:

I may as well have been at a wine tasting, talking ridiculously about delicate bouquets, with hints of currant and chocolate, and a crisp finish. But no, this was a mobile phone press conference (HTC’s), where the company’s phone designer (Scott Croyle) was talking about perfectly crisp edges and simple surface breaks. We were fed a video about micro-arc oxidation, where the phone’s aluminum is bathed in a plasma field, so that it just feels, you know, awesome, like anything bathed in plasma inevitably does.

Just when you think it couldn’t get any more absurd, Croyle said (and I am NOT making this up): “We strive for our phones to be human and approachable.” After calling the phone “supersexy,” he also said that “what matters most is that when somebody picks up an HTC phone, we strike an emotional connection…it’s about creating that moment of desire, when you immediately know that this is the one for me.”

Who writes this crap? Hallmark?

Am I using the phone to make a call, or having consensual sex with it?

And because design is core to HTC’s DNA (a staple phrase of press conferences), according to Croyle, we had to hear ALL about it. Tell me which of these things doesn’t make you absolutely crave simply holding the brand-new HTC One (which,…………… continues on InformationWeek

TAIPEI — Taiwan’s HTC Corp. is facing the squeeze in the Android and Windows camps as Nokia Oyj has won more ground in the Windows Phones market and Samsung is outperforming the Taiwanese company in the Android sector, according to U.S.-based research firm Strategy Analytics.

Global smartphones using Microsoft Corp.’s Windows operating system grew 36 percent sequentially to reach 2.7 million units in the fourth quarter of 2011, Strategy Analytics said in a report recently.

Nokia, whose global Windows Phone shipments hit 0.9 million units in the period, overtook HTC and other vendors to become the world’s largest Windows Phone maker with 33 percent market share, the report said.

“Nokia’s Microsoft smartphone growth during the quarter was achieved partly by capturing market share from HTC,” said Tom Kang, director at Strategy Analytics.

“This is a challenging development for HTC because it is also losing ground to Samsung in the Android segment,” he added.

“HTC is now at risk of being caught in a pincer movement between the giants of Samsung in Android and Nokia in Microsoft, and HTC must move…………… continues on China Post